Fresh Water - Salt Water

Photo Credit: Laura Manariti

A cross-continental collision of
culture and creativity.

Fresh Water – Salt Water is a bilateral collaboration between the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival to commission and present four new works by Australian and UK composers performed in both countries.

The ensemble features Yolŋu traditional songmen, David Wilfred and Daniel Wilfred from Arnhem Land (NT) along with an ensemble of leading Australian musicians in creative collaboration with British composer/performers Mandhira de Saram and Cath Roberts.

The work itself is a setting of a songline sung in the Wagiläk language that takes us inland from the mouth of the Walker River. Daniel says: “the songline takes us from the Salt Water near the Walker River entrance at Lutemby to a freshwater billabong near Nylipidgi where our home country is. When we get to the freshwater billabong we can drink. The songline structure is a cycle of songs that maps the country and shows us the way to travel.”

Supported by UK Australia Season through DFAT and British Council

Program

Introduction - The birds are waiting for the squalling wind to abate so they can fly.

Lutemby - This is the place where the Walker River meets the sea. Guguk flies over Lutemby.

Guguk - Guguk is the Bush Dove, which waits by the salt water in the mangroves listening to the wind.

Birrik Birrik - Birrik Birrik is the Plover Bird, which flies with us as we travel through the land.

Jilai - We sit and take a break from traveling and sing a song

Wata - Wata means wind. The wind picks up the birds as they fly. The wind pushes them out.

Fire - The fire gathers the spirits and sends the wild black fella spirit Djuwalpada walking towards the billabong.

Djuwalpada - Djuwalpada is the spirit who made the country and this is his songline. He has lots of songs and he gave these songs to different places.

Gapu - We arrive at the billabong where we can drink fresh water (Gapu) and dance.

Marimu Goodbye - This is the Goodbye Song we sing to send everyone off feeling good.

The Australian Art Orchestra

With an emphasis on improvisation, The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) explores the meeting points between disciplines and cultures, and imagines new musical forms to reflect the energy and diversity of 21st century Australia.

Founded in 1994 the AAO is one of Australia’s leading contemporary ensembles. Now led by daring composer/trumpeter/sound artist Peter Knight, its work constantly seeks to stretch genres and break down the barriers separating disciplines, forms and cultures. It explores the interstices between the avant-garde and the traditional, between art and popular music, between electronic and acoustic approaches, and creates music that traverse the continuum between improvised and notated forms.

The Australian Art Orchestra has won numerous awards and much praise for the work creates including most recently the 2022 AMC Art Music Luminary Award Award.

Creative Team

Mandhira De Saram – violin

Cath Roberts – saxophone

Daniel Wilfred – voice and clapping sticks

David Wilfred – didgeridoo

Helen Svoboda – double bass and voice

Peter Knight – trumpet and electronics

Martin Ng – turntables

Aviva Endean – clarinets and harmonic flute

Artist Biographies

Mandhira De Saram – violin

Mandhira de Saram is a founding member and leader of the Ligeti Quartet, a string quartet who specialise in contemporary music in all its many guises. She is also a busy soloist - an improviser, chamber musician and collaborator, working across a variety of genres with musicians such as Jason Singh, Wadada Leo Smith, Trish Clowes, Ethan Iverson and Shabaka Hutchings. She has regular duos with Benoît Delbecq (with whom she recently released an album, Spinneret) and Steve Beresford, and is a member of TableMusic and Riot Ensemble. She has performed at prestigious venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre and St John’s Smith Square in London, and Carnegie Hall in New York, and has featured on BBC Radio 3 programmes such as In Tune, Music Matters, Jazz on 3, Hear and Now, and Late Junction.

Cath Roberts – saxophone

Cath Roberts’ work explores free improvisation, composition and the music at their meeting point. Her primary outlet as a composer and improviser on baritone saxophone is the band Sloth Racket, which has toured widely and released several albums. She also improvises using live electronics and objects.

As bandmate, Cath is a member of several groups including Madwort Sax Quartet, Article XI and MoonMot. She has a long-standing duo with guitarist Anton Hunter (Ripsaw Catfish), as well as regular collaborations with Tullis Rennie, Benedict Taylor, Otto Willberg, Seth Bennett and others. Cath co-runs LUME with Dee Byrne, producing concerts, tours and festivals since 2013 and releasing music on their offshoot label Luminous. With Tom Ward and Colin Webster she organises BRÅK, an improvised music series taking place in Brockley, South East London.

Cath’s visual work can be seen on many Luminous releases, Sloth Racket tour flyers and LUME publicity materials, and in 2021 she created a giant, fragmented graphic score for an hcmf// commission, And then the next thing you know.

Daniel Wilfred – voice and clapping sticks

Daniel Wilfred is a Yolŋu song man from Ngukurr, South East Arnhem Land (NT), and a ceremonial leader for the Wägilak people, singing manikay and playing bilma at ceremonies. His collaboration with the AAO goes back more than a decade, performing and touring internationally with the project Crossing Roper Bar, as a contributor to projects The Hearkening and Seoul Meets Arnhem Land, and as a faculty member of the AAO’s annual Creative Music Intensive. In 2019, Daniel was the recipient of the NT Arts Fellowship.

David Wilfred – yidaki (didgeridoo), voice, dance

David Yipininy Wilfred is a Ritharrŋu man, and the traditional djunggayi (manager) of the manikay (songs) of the country of Nyilipidgi. He lives in Ngukurr, NT and teaches song and dance to the children at the Ngukurr School.Together with his family members Daniel and Benjamin Wilfred, he has been playing with the Australian Art Orchestra for almost 15 years, sharing his songs and culture with people around the world. From 2015, David has been a leading faculty member at the Orchestra’s Creative Music Intensive.

Helen Svoboda – double bass and voice

Helen Svoboda is a double bassist, vocalist, composer and nature-enthusiast. Her work explores the melodic potential of the contemporary double bass, intricately weaving extended techniques and overtones amidst abstract song-writing and vegetable-themed compositions. “A musician who absolutely defies categorisation” (Andrew Ford – The Music Show, ABC), her performance practice emits a childlike, quirky energy, with a flair for "allowing difficult ideas to sound whimsical and free" (Kristin Berardi, AUS).

Helen lived and studied in the Netherlands and Germany between the years of 2018-20, and has performed with artists and organisations including Cory Smythe, Sebastian Gramss, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Art Orchestra. She was awarded the 2020 Freedman Jazz Fellowship, was the recipient of the 2020/21 Australian Art Orchestra Pathfinders Music Leadership Program and is currently studying a PhD in composition under the tutelage of Cat Hope at Monash University. In January 2023, she will embark upon a three month residency as part of the Helsinki International Artist Programme (supported by the Australia Council for the Arts), focusing on her solo practice in the arctic surrounds of Suomenlinna - an 18th-century sea fortress and nature area.

Peter Knight – trumpet and electronics (artistic director)

Perpetually curious, composer/trumpeter/sound artist Peter Knight’s practice exists in the spaces between categories, between genres, and between cultures.

In recent years Peter has emerged as a significant international force in contemporary music, initiating commissions, collaborations, and performances with a diverse range of artists including recently, Anthony Braxton (USA), as a soloist with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Nicole Lizée (Canada), Amir ElSaffar (USA), Daniel Wilfred (Arnhem Land), Senyawa (Indonesia), Baliphonics (Sri Lanka), Hyelim Kim (Korea/UK), Paul Grabowsky (Australia) and Alvin Lucier (USA). He has performed his music at some of the most significant festivals and venues in the world including recently: London Jazz Festival, Pierre Boulez Saal (Berlin), JazzFest Berlin, Soundstreams (Toronto), and National Forum of Music (Wroclaw, Poland).

Peter has released 12 albums of his music on various labels and in 2022 a new solo album, Shadow Phase, is coming out on the iconic Room40 label. Peter has also been Artistic Director of the Australian Art Orchestra, for the last ten years.

Martin Ng – turntables

Martin is perhaps the most distinctive turntablist Australia has produced.He started playing turntables at the age of 15, working as a club DJ in the 80's, but his performing style was too radical for regular clubs, so he gave up conventional DJing in the favour of experimental turntablism techniques.Ng collaborated with many artists, both live and in the studio. In 2001 he released an album with Mathias Gmachl (of Farmers Manual) on Megolabel. Together with Martin Tétreault and OtomoYoshihide he participated in 'Tuntable Hell' UK-tour in 2002. For Now Now Festival at Australia in 2003, he organised The Vinyl Double Quartet: eight artists, includingCor Fuhler, OrenAmbarchi, Anthony Pateras and Lucas Abela, were performing with turntables, all playing the same record - Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz. These recordings appear on the official festival compilation under the name Martin Ng Turntable Orchestra. Most recently he released a double vinyl The Vanishing on Hospital Hill with Oren Ambarchi and Ensemble Offspring (2019).

Aviva Endean – clarinets and harmonic flute

Aviva Endean is an artist dedicated to fostering a deep engagement with (and care for) sound and music, with the hope that attentive listening can connect people with each other and their environment. Trained as a clarinet player, she now works across a range of contexts including experimental and improvised music, creating theatre works which are designed to be listened to, and working on cross-disciplinary collaborations. Aviva's work has been presented at festivals nationally and internationally and in collaboration with organisations including Chunky Move, Chamber Made and Australian Art Orchestra. Her debut solo release cinder : ember : ashes featuring improvisations and original compositions was released on Norwegian label SOFA in 2018 to critical acclaim, with reviews speaking to Aviva’s innovation and virtuosity, and describing the work as ‘captivating, sophisticated, stunning, miraculous’ & ‘trance-inducing’. Her follow up electro-acoustic album ‘Moths & Stars’ was released on Room40 in 2022.